Ruth Dixon Turner
Ruth Turner and Colleen Cavanaugh dissecting clams from the deep sea
Born	(1914-12-07)December 7, 1914 Melrose, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	April 30, 2000(2000-04-30) (aged 85) Waltham, Massachusetts, U.S.
Alma mater	Harvard University
Scientific career
Fields	Malacology
Institutions	Museum of Comparative Zoology

Ruth Dixon Turner (1914 – April 30, 2000) was a pioneering U.S. marine biologist and malacologist. She was the world's expert on Teredinidae or shipworms, a taxonomic family of wood-boring bivalve mollusks which severely damage wooden marine installations.

Turner held the Alexander Agassiz Professorship at Harvard University, and was a Curator of Malacology in the university's Museum of Comparative Zoology, where she also served as co-editor of the scientific journal Johnsonia. She graduated from Bridgewater State College, earned a master's degree at Cornell University and a Ph.D. at Harvard (Radcliffe College) where she specialized in shipworm research.^[1][2]

Turner became one of Harvard's first tenured women professors in 1973, and was one of the most academically successful female marine researchers, publishing over 200 scientific articles and a book during her long career. She was also the first female scientist to use the deep ocean research submarine Alvin.^[3] Much of Turner's work was done in co-operation with William J. Clench. Among other things they jointly described about 70 new mollusk species.^[4]

Organisms named in honor of Turner include two symbiotic bacteria associated with bivalves: Teredinibacter turnerae (isolated from the shipworm Lyrodus pedicellatus),^[5] and Candidatus Ruthia magnifica (from the deep-sea bivalve Calyptogena magnifica).^[6]

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External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ruth Turner.

• Biography of Turner
• Obituary of Turner